Time's Up Pitch

Title

The title of our film is Times Up. We decided to use a specialized font that looks like those used on a digital clock, to fit the connotation of time running out. The colour of the font is red to connote danger, and also to create a sense of verisimilitude with the font and colour used on digital clock numbers. We also used a black background to create a sense of mystery. We used this as it is common for people to have a fear of the unknown, and this is a theme that we wanted to represent throughout our film.

Production Company

Our production company logo is the title Chilling Entertainment in two sinister looking fonts, "Symbiote" for Chilling and "Necropsy" for Entertainment. Both of these fonts connote different common conventions of psychological thrillers; white noise or paranormal activity and blood and gore. The text is white and presented on a black background for a polar contrast, and so the colour white can connote the meaning of the word chilling. Behind the text is a murky white handprint that would common.

Narrative

Our protagonist Gabrielle, is left alone for the week by her mother who is working abroad for extra money. At first the main character is happy with this because it means that she gets to spend more time with her friends having parties etc. However, this all ends up badly when one night she sees a masked person standing outside her window waving at her. She sees this through her mirror and when she turns around to look outside, the person is gone. She speaks to her best friend, William, who tells her to speak to the police about it because at least she stopped it happening from the future. The police send Gabrielle and William to a detective who says that the masked antagonist is a serial killer who has never failed at his schemes. When he calls to say how much time they have until they die, they always die when the timer hits 0. Throughout the movie, if we created a full one, there would be a time in the corner that would appear every now and again and it would show how long the main character had left until the time will run out. Her best friend decides to stay with Gabrielle to help make her feel safe from the antagonist until one night he calls and says that she has 12 hours to live. The detective keeps CCTV looking at the house to make sure that she’s safe and this killer can’t get into the house. Somehow, the killer finds his way in the house and has locked all the doors and cut all communication from the outside making it impossible for Gabrielle to get the detective’s help. William goes missing and the protagonist now has to survive on her own. The killer chases her throughout the house and there are emotional scenes where she was trying to hide or defend herself from his attacks. After a series of events, she realizes that she has survived over 12 hours and she finds out that a person she knows has been the killer the whole time and that normally the killer poisons their food, but Gabrielle hadn't taken any poison. After an ending battle to the death, Gabrielle manages to stop the killer and escape through the basement where she finds William. The detective finally breaks his way into the house and finds the dead killer along with Gabrielle and William. This ends the killings once and for all.

Characters

The characters that we will use in our film include an unknown killer. Having a murderer or serial killer as the antagonist is typical of the psychological thriller genre.  The killer’s face will be hidden by a white mask, therefore hiding their identity. This follows the conventions of films such as Scream.

Another character we will use is Gabrielle, the female protagonist. She will be played by Rhiannon, and shown throughout the film as a dominant female character. This is atypical of the thriller genre, as females are often shown at damsels in distress, needing rescued by the male protagonist.

Gabrielle’s best friend Emma will be played by Rachel. We chose to include this character as a voice of reason, and someone to keep Gabrielle calm. She will be the one who decides to go to the detective, who will be played by Rhiannon’s father.

We chose to use these characters as they are roughly the same age as our target audience, 18-25, therefore the audience will be able to relate to the characters that are portrayed on screen.

Target Audience

Our target audience is men aged 18-25 as this age and gender is stereotypically more likely to enjoy psychological thrillers as they involve violence and scary or unsettling material. Our audience will be a global mass audience. This means our film will attract people of all ages, nationalities and film preferences due to its genre. Horrors and thrillers are particularly popular upon cinema release as mainly teenagers and young adults are known to view it in cinemas in groups of friends as entertainment.

Setting

We wanted to have our trailer mainly shown in a home because this is seen as where a person is most comfortable and relaxed; however in our trailer we see the antagonist invading this space and destroying this comfort zone. The door and the window are two of the areas we will be filming as we need to show Gabrielle’s mum leaving the house at the beginning of the trailer and this is to connote that she is already leaving her comfort zone slightly. The picture of the window is also what we have in mind as she sees the antagonist through it and this is also to connote that the antagonist is getting closer to invading her space. These are only just some of the pictures of settings that we have in mind. We have other ideas for places to film in, but this will be decided when we practice filming.